I read a post by ‘MinimumCover’ today, a serving police constable and a blogger. It’s very clear that he wants to do his best to protect the communities he serves under difficult circumstances often with insufficient kit and resource
s. He’s also a brilliant story-teller and although, anonymous, a likeable human being doing a tough job.
Today, he writes about his frustration with a domestic violence case where, in his words, the “violent bully” wasn’t prosecuted because the victim and family members dropped the case. He clearly wanted to see justice done and he was hugely dissapointed that it wasn’t. But his conclusion is for me, a curious one. He says:
“If you call Police to report that your husband, wife or other family member is attacking you please expect Police to deal with what is reported”…….”If you have no intention of allowing anyone to investigate or prosecute what you are reporting then, with the greatest of respect, don’t call!”
This raises 3 questions:
1. If you are being punched in the face by your husband, should you be expected to weigh up the pros and cons of whether or not you intend to go ahead with the prosecution and then make a rational, informed and final decision before you call 999?
2. Is at the forefront of your mind at every stage of the case as it progresses a) the costs to the police system and the personal satisfaction of one police constable OR b) do what I need to do to keep myself safe?
3. What is stopping the police system from dealing with the presenting (and hidden) demand placed on it?
There are some clues in his piece. What do you think?
Unfortunately, my only knowledge of police work is from watching TV police shows. In the HBO’s The Wire they would often talk about the concept of ‘juking the stats’, as shown in this bit of dialogue (for those that haven’t seen the show, Prez is an ex-police officer now working as a teacher):
ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL: So for the time being, all teachers will devote class time to teaching language arts sample questions. Now if you turn to page eleven, please, I have some things I want to go over with you.
ROLAND “PREZ” PRYZBYLEWSKI: I don’t get it, all this so we score higher on the state tests? If we’re teaching the kids the test questions, what is it assessing in them?
TEACHER: Nothing, it assesses us. The test scores go up, they can say the schools are improving. The scores stay down, they can’t.
PREZ: Juking the stats.
TEACHER: Excuse me?
PREZ: Making robberies into larcenies, making rapes disappear. You juke the stats, and major become colonels. I’ve been here before.
TEACHER: Wherever you go, there you are.
I’m surprised to have never found any systems thinkers write about this phenomenon (maybe someone could blog about it!).
And if you have never watched The Wire, stop what you are doing and go out any buy season 1 now, as it is just about the best thing on television. Ever.